Grand Theft Auto IV

10.0

Format Xbox 360

Developer Rockstar North

Publisher Rockstar Games

Genre Action, Adventure

19 Comments

Where to begin? The first time I realised that the radio interference came from my in-game mobile, not my real one? That long chase the length of Fifth Avenue during a thunderstorm, thunder drowning out the Uzi as I weaved in and out of traffic while The Stooges blared on the radio? Setting up that first internet date - finding the right person, waiting for them to answer, finally arranging a meeting - only for it to go sour when I unloaded a shotgun into their head before a restaurant of horrified diners?

This game is finished to such an astonishing level of detail, so overflowing with people and events and experiences and stuff, that even if we dedicated this entire magazine to listing the amazing things that could happen in Liberty City we'd still barely scratch the surface.

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So let's nail down the basics: this is the best open-world game yet created. It really is that good. It's also a GTA game, so you already know the basics: lots of space, lots of traffic, and lots of bad things that need to be done to bad people. The surprise, and the delight, is that everything - absolutely everything, from the dirt on the cars to the ringtones for your mobile right through to the character you play as - has been created to a ridiculously high level of detail. The result is a game that it's almost impossible to get bored of.

A big part of this is the character you play as. Right off the bat, Niko Bellic is a more charismatic, more likeable fellow than the trigger-happy thugs of previous GTA games. A fresh immigrant from a never-named but war-torn Eastern European country, he has the sort of laid-back, all-knowing attitude that comes from having already seen humanity at its worst, and his slightly sarcastic, slightly bemused reaction to the city's hyper-capitalist, coffee-crazed inhabitants means you start warming to him immediately.


Having discovered that your cousin Roman's stories of girls and high living conceal a grotty bedsit, a cab firm and mounting gambling debts, you're soon making contact - in the most physical sense - with the city's criminal fraternity, setting you on the road to finding that "special someone" alluded to in the pre-release trailer.

This takes you out further and further into the stunningly detailed city. And we aren't talking about the boosted draw distance and more detailed graphics, impressive though they are.

We're talking people cleaning windows, drinking coffee, jabbering on the phone. People who join in if you start a fight, then run away and call the police if you draw a gun. It doesn't feel like a static model filled with generic NPCs designed only to bounce off your bonnet, it feels like a proper city filled with real people with real reactions. You feel slightly guilty about shooting somebody in the head and taking their motor. But not enough to stop you doing it.

That was impressive enough, but what really blew us away was the discovery that there's just as much depth in the storyline and the narrative as there is in the city in which it takes place.

Rockstar hasn't just plonked a world in front of you and bolted a storyline on top as an excuse to gradually unlock different bits of it.

It's created something more like a top-end television series, introducing and building a series of credible characters - each with a proper history that you even discover over time, rather than a load of transparent stereotypes who exist only to spark another car chase.

On a mission
It starts off simple, with basic fetching and carrying and murdering missions dished out through the mobile phone that is your main point of contact with the world. It's incredibly well integrated - calls and texts add locations to your map, and significant missions are automatically flagged on the GPS in every car.

The missions themselves are pure Hollywood. In some cases this is because they have been lifted straight from the big screen - there's an extended Heat-style heist that makes Kane & Lynch's attempt look woeful, and a subway train chase from the French Connection, idiotic traffic and all - but most of them are home-made, and the thrill comes from the fact that you're making them up as you go. Grenade the front door, or burst in the back with a shotgun? Go in shooting, or appropriate a disguise? You choose.

Not every mission gives you such choices, but there's always the opportunity to freestyle thanks to the much-improved shooting and brand new cover system. Hold the trigger halfway for free-aim, or all the way to lock on. You can view health and armour levels in the targeting reticule, and move your aim within it to pull off headshots or focus on the bit of gangster/SWAT member/bastard who cut you up in traffic that you can see sticking out from what they're hiding behind.

Meanwhile, you're hiding behind something of your own, thanks to a slick cover system that enables you to execute a proper attack plan rather than run in with a machine gun. You know, if you want.

Such battles - with Niko bellowing insults as glass shatters, plaster is chewed away, and furniture is thrown aside by gunfire - are the sort of thing that would be grand set pieces in lesser games; here they're something you can start with the police if you're bored.

All about the chase
Other challenges, like drive-and-gun car chases, are more about luck than judgement. When you smash the driver's window and reach out with your machine-gun, there's no lock-on to guide your aim, so it's a case of trying to nail the driver or the tyres while trying to keep your car on the road. The joy here is the random chance - you might get lucky and wing a tyre or a petrol tank, ending the chase that bit quicker, or a light may change at the wrong moment, sending you into the side of a taxi.

You don't fail often, but when you do it's according to the rules of the world: there are no enforced stops, just your own mistakes or bad luck.

As the missions get more advanced, they open up more and more possibilities. Some are traditional, like the boats and helicopters, others brand new - like the fully-fledged in-game internet.

This, like everything else in GTA IV, is packed with extras for you to discover. Some missions demand you check your email or visit certain websites to set up meetings or find information, but there's plenty more that you can browse at your leisure: highly cynical news coverage of your latest crime, online personal ads, sites for local businesses and more. Email (complete with spam) offers another glimpse into Niko's character: choose a positive or negative response to each message and he'll write a typically understated reply.

As you do more missions, you meet more people and get more work, and after a while it all starts to interconnect. The group you double-crossed earlier comes back for revenge, former allies stab you in the back, the smuggler you were previously helping now has to be killed - and then you're drawn into power struggles between the characters themselves. And not passively, either, because in some cases you have to choose who lives and dies.

It's a genuinely tough choice, and not just because it affects what the survivors will do for you. You've really got to know these people, and in some cases you really don't want to bump them off. We spent more time agonising over one particularly tough choice than we did over harvesting BioShock's Little Sisters.

There's also a heavy crossover between your business work and your social life, which also operates through the phone. The friends you meet can be kept sweet by regular socialising: bowling and dinner usually swings it for the ladies, boozing and strip clubs for the guys. The sports are full-on minigames, of varying levels of interest: playing an entire game of pool or darts can drag on a bit, although mastering the right analogue stick to bowl a perfect strike is compelling.

Other distractions are simpler: work out their favourite restaurants and you're sorted, and some have their own bespoke distractions. Brucie, for example, likes going for a ride in his helicopter, which is good practice for the missions that require it.

Strip clubs are simple, too, and mercifully lacking in Hot Coffee. You can get a private dance, yes, but it's... just a private dance. The models aren't detailed enough to make this anything for the Daily Mail to worry about, although doubtless that won't stop them trying. Comedy clubs I won't spoil, save to say that they're not to be missed.

Putting the A into GTA
A word about the cars. They're excellent. Each has a convincing weight and feel, from the tail-happy muscle cars to the skittish city runarounds and tank-like SUVs. You can't rely on the handbrake to carry you around every corner, either. A more Project Gotham-flavoured balance of brake and accelerator is required and watch the damage too.

It wasn't until I was fleeing a government drug bust with a boot full of Colombia's finest - and thus unable to ditch the car - that I twigged that setting the tyres on fire (by driving through the flaming wreckage of a luckless agent) meant that they burst after a while, and a car with two burst tyres is not the sort of thing you should use to escape a three-star wanted rating. Although if you do pull it off, the sense of victory is all the sweeter when the final mission cinematic shows you pulling up in a car riddled with bullet holes with the blood of the previous owner splattered across the windscreen.

The vehicles are very recognisable too, which goes a long way towards making the city seem more credible - it might be carefully disguised with lawyer-dodging brands and street names, but the first time you see Time Square filled with yellow cabs you know exactly what it is, and the thrill of playing in a setting so familiar from all those films and TV shows is a long-lasting one.
But while the appearance of the world is familiar, what makes this game so stunning, and what makes it something you have to play, is the depth that lies beneath that appearance.

It's the world you believe in, a cast you care about, and a script that's stuffed with brilliant moments. Like the time you drive halfway across town with two bodies in the boot (which opens if you hit anything, so you've got to nip out and shut it before anybody notices) to a bent doctor, who just looks at the bullet holes in their heads and says "Ah, natural causes." Or the excruciating experience of a grieving family inviting you to the funeral of somebody who you killed. Or... well, I won't go on, because it'd take the rest of the mag and I still wouldn't have covered everything. And through it all goes Niko, still looking for that "certain someone," a cold-hearted killer you can't help liking.

There are minor grumbles - the cover system stumbling in box-filled environments, slightly over-enthusiastic target lock-on, occasional pop-up. Even so, it's not enough to stop this being a game that you really should experience, because it raises the bar for all the others you'll play this year.

It says something that even at the end of a three-day session, with every island and a substantial chunk of the sidequests unlocked, I was still ploughing on because I wanted to see how the story ended. And I was still finding new stuff: the way a police klaxon goes strangled and gargley if you dent the light bar, the pedestrian who had the original GTA theme as their phone ringtone, the way that headshot drivers can fall on the horn and accelerator so you're run over by a dead man, a random song that means you spend the next hour checking that radio station hoping it comes on again...

This sets the standard for what you should expect from a truly next-gen game. You owe it to yourself to play it.

Jon Hicks